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Help nominate FirstRain and Penny for the 6th annual Crunchies Awards! The award ceremony recognizes the most captivating startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. It’s co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch.

The ceremony will take place January 31, 2013 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. You can vote for FirstRain in the “Sexiest Enterprise Startup” and “Best Content Discovery Application” categories. You can also vote for Penny in the “CEO of the Year” category.

Our world is surrounded by software. Every day teenagers spend more than 10 hours a day on line interfacing through a software layer – texting, facebook, tumblr, TV, movies – all are constructed in software and people use a software layer to interact. Even as a CEO, my day is dominated by software – Office apps, Twitter, Skype and even Words with Friends.
Software is changing our world in as profound a way as the book did starting in 1440. The book, following the invention of the printing press, democratized knowledge. Anyone who could read and write could share ideas and change the way other people thought. By 1500 there were 35,000 book titles in print and over 20MM books printed. 60 years after the invention of the computer the influence of software on our world is still growing exponentially.
And it touches everyone. Poor illiterate women in India running micro businesses through a cellphone. CEOs and bankers. Students at a Palo Alto High School. And so when I was invited to give a TEDx talk at Gunn High School two weeks ago I chose to talk about how being able to code – or at least understand enough structured logic to create software apps – is as important now as being able to read and write.
Technology is now where the jobs are, where the growth is, where the source of the major revolution of the next 100 years starts. It’s an exciting place to be and it’s a meritocracy. Everyone can learn it, just like everyone can learn to read and write.
Here’s my talk:
And the most exciting thing for me giving this talk was that at the end I was surrounded by teenage girls thrilled to have their interest in software and technology endorsed and confirmed by my talk.

Charm as a leadership currency seems to change with every wave of silicon valley engineering companies.

In the old days of the early semiconductor firms the CEOs were often gruff white men. Most came up through the ranks of real products, dirty products, chemicals in the manufacturing process, union labor forces… and charm was not a necessary part of the job. Like the famously paranoid Andy Grove of Intel and the crusty Wilf Corrigan of LSI Logic. They didn’t have to be charming — they had to be in with their boards and drive global market growth for their products. They barely even worked the customers after the first few because it was an engineering and distribution driven business.

Then we had the wave of computer companies like Sun Microsystems and HP and large enterprise software firms like Oracle. Now the CEO’s had a bit more charm but it was B2B charm of the likes of Scott McNealy and John Chambers. Stay focused on the major customers and charm the sell-side analysts that covered them. Build a world class team, set high goals for your sales team (give rousing speeches at Quota Club meetings in Hawaii), pay well and drive global growth to large customers.

But now we have the wave of internet and media companies where charm on a global scale matters. This new wave of leadership focuses on accessibility, charming the media, long on user-experience and number of users, shorter on hard engineering. Old school style back fires as Carol Bartz found out at Yahoo. Open communications like Larry Page’s recent letter, mea culpa as Reed Hastings did at Netflix, charm on a global scale as Arianna Huffington did for the HuffPo and the relentless visibility of the very charming Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook fame are part of the global marketing machine.

The first group of CEOs were often engineering based and visible only in print — rough was OK. The second group was often sales based — smoother but customer focused and sometime visible on CNBC. Now we live in the era of the media-savvy CEO who is visible everywhere, all the time. Still technical, but the darlings of the tech press are the ones who know how to work the media, and social media, to their advantage.

But wait. Even today charm only goes so far. You still have to produce top line and net income growth for your investors. Charm and modern communication skills are essential in the media and internet world which is so over covered today, but they are a necessary but not sufficient condition for B2B success (unless, of course, you can get bought for technology before you figure out your revenue model).

So if you are in a B2B engineering-based product business focus on the fundamentals of your technology and your customers, but don’t forget to hone your charm skills for this new era.

At FirstRain many of our technical and support team are located in Gurgaon just outside of New Delhi in India. Because it is very important that the US based team and the India based team work closely together we not only travel to Gurgaon several times a year, we also bring Gurgaon team members out to San Mateo from time to time for product design sessions, for training and to improve our support process.
Earlier this month Sagar and Nitin came out for 2 weeks and since they were here over a weekend we decided to take them for a classic California experience – wine tasting at Ridge Winery. Ridge is in Cupertino up on the Montebello ridge and offers spectacular views of the Bay Area, plus a warm garden to picnic in and wine tasting for those that drink. We put together a picnic and took family members with us, including one who was 15 months old, and one who was 82. A great way to get to know one another better in a relaxed atmosphere.

I was delighted that my blog, The Grassy Road, was selected as one of the top 10 CEO blogs by Chief Executive Magazine this week. Given all the exposure and risk a CEO already faces why, you may ask, blog?
At the heart of my reasoning is that transparency is a good thing for a CEO. It’s important the CEO is an active communicator, it’s important that she is well understood by all her constituencies and a blog can be a powerful additive to the traditional communication platforms.
We have a FirstRain blog – MarketMine – on our web site. It’s a good vehicle for us to comment on our industry, market developments at FirstRain, showcase customers, and for my team to write and share their views in an open forum.
But for a CEO blog Seth Godin set the bar high when he posted many years ago that blogs need
“Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy – Does this sound like a CEO to you?”
I agree – this is a tall order – but if you can do it then it becomes both interesting reading and a vehicle for people to get to know me… my opinions on industry, technology, corporate boards, gender equality issues and, then sprinkled in just occasionally, a personal post about a vacation or a swimming race.
You can get to know me and what I care about very easily by reading my writing. You’ll know where I stand on a number of business issues, what developments matter to me as CEO of FirstRain, and, if you want to, how to connect with me. It’s a powerful recruiting tool for prospective employees to understand our culture, and many customers read it as a way of staying close to FirstRain.
More challenging is blogging on the Huffington Post if I think an idea is interesting to the Business section readers (I’m not qualified to write about politics or celebrities which are their highest traffic sections!). HuffPo has a huge readership and so posting there carries significant responsibility, but overall I get positive feedback from people who find it helpful and so I strive to share my experience, and expose readers to our business at the same time.
But it is not without risk. As a visible person (I sit on two public company boards) I do also have to be very careful that what I write never breaches confidentiality, while controversial is never in bad taste, and does not embarrass my companies even indirectly. This is hard at times – I am not without strong opinions! Sometimes I want to write on an idea that even I know is a little out there and I’ll ask my team for advice – and so far they have corralled me well.
We are swimming in a social media world. It’s one of the characteristics of today’s Web that makes the need for FirstRain so strong in our customers. They need to understand, with great precision, what’s developing in their markets. One of the best ways I can stay on top of the emerging trends is to be a part of that world myself – blogging and tweeting and collaborating so I understand first hand what the benefits and challenges are.
John Kador characterized me as ” fearless in mixing the personal with the professional in her blog”. I should have told him about the deep breath I take before I click on Publish Post each time!

Living in Silicon Valley, running a software company with big ambitions I hear the question a lot. Is this another tech bubble? Isn’t is going to burst again?
The short answer is no.
Pundits covering tech tend to confuse valuation with long term value. We may well be in a valuation bubble but unlike the 2000 tech bubble the companies in question have deep, sustainable revenue models.
There are certainly some high valuations – per Fred Wilson’s view of frothy valuations in April – and these are driven by investor demand. As Father Guido Sarducci so wisely said in the 5 minute university, Economics is about supply and demand. When a few companies have sky high valuations in the public and private markets VCs are chasing good ideas with too much money again and so the early stage and later stage valuations may be getting silly for most companies, but some will be worth it.
Valuation is very different than long term value. Technology, and in particular software, is where long term sustainable value is being built. And when I say long term I am thinking hundreds of years. Marc Andreesen wrote very eloquently about this in the WSJ on Saturday in his essay Why Software Is Eating the World. We are at the beginning of a long era in which technology will reshape every aspect of our lives in ways we are just now beginning to see.
Just as the Industrial Revolution developed over more than 150 years in the 18th and 19th centuries and reshaped machines, industry, transport and the very nature of where people chose to live and work, technology is now reshaping the way we communicate, are entertained, where we live and work and shop and it is rewiring our kids brains for a new world. I’ve believed this for 20 years and the ups and downs of the tech world over that period have done nothing to dissuade me from that belief because technology is steadily, consistently and dramatically changing our lives. (Want to get some perspective on the 150 year change last time around – spend a day in Ironbridge in Shropshire, England.)
It’s happening right now because the pieces are now in place. As Marc writes “Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.” The cost structure is right, the technology base is ready. In FirstRain’s case we have built a highly disruptive technology that changes the way business people use the web for their critical decision making. As Roger McNamee says in his thought provoking talk “Everything is Changing”, Google’s approach to indexing has peaked. People want apps designed for their specific need (he cites his investments like Facebook and Yelp), not one app for all needs, and they want it on their device of choice – which is a smartphone or an iPad. In our case the business need is even more specific than that. Our users want a business web app so they can tap into the breadth, currency and power of the web as a data source, but they want it tailored to their specific business and role, and they want it in a cost effective way.
Marc and Roger are just two rockstars in Silicon Valley but most people here agree with them (and not just because we are all drinking the same Kool-Aid). Yes we are dealing with some higher valuations, maybe that is a bubble, but the long term value being built in technology is real, and software is where it’s at. And what makes it even better is it a continuously exciting place to build a career, or even a company.

Everyone interacts differently in the office, based on their role and personality, but most people sort into one of two types with respect to their impact on other people: energy sources and energy sinks. The CEO has to be open to all, and to motivate and energize all, and so I become very aware of the net gain or drain of interaction with my coworkers – and everyone at all levels of the company is consciously or unconsciously impacting the energy level of the people around them.Energy sinks:- Bring you problems for you to solve. They’ll arrive with a problem, dump it on you and ask what you are going to do about it. Particularly sink-ish when they phone you up with the problem on Friday afternoon and get it off their chest so you can worry about it all weekend.
- Have a negative outlook. Every solution you come up with they shoot it down without chewing on it first, and they drag down other people in the discussion who are trying to find a positive solution. Some people are consistently negative – about movies, about food, about their spouse. It’s exhausting!
- Take cheap shots up. Some people think it’s OK to be positive down their organization, positive to peers and attack up. The logic is something like “well you wanted the job so you just have to take it”. Very negative to other people in the room and, inside, very tiring for the leader. Equally draining are people who are obsequious – also does not move the business forward.
- Are non interactive. They sit silent in a problem solving discussion. Especially frustrating when you know they are smart and have ideas to contribute so you work extra hard to help them participate and overcome whatever inhibition is holding them back.
In contrast energy sources:
- Bring solutions with the problems. Even if they don’t have a good solution to some killer problem you are facing together, they try get the brainstorming going until the team comes up with a reasonable idea.
- Bring smart, out of the box solutions. The people who are willing to listen to an issue, think and then take the risk of an unusual or creative solution are particularly energizing, even if half their ideas are bad ones. They open up the solution space for everyone.
- See issues as bumps in the road, not roadblocks.- See you a fellow traveler on the road (whatever level of management you are at), working together to move the company forward. They don’t take cheap shots or kiss up.
- Have a positive outlook. Some people know how to look for the silver lining – it’s in their nature – and these people often become leaders of their teams, whether they have an official manager role or not.
- Understand that executives are human. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets stumped at times and energy sources know that and detect when to be demanding and when to offer an ear to listen. As CEO you can never expect support from below, you need to be self reliant, but it sure is helpful sometimes when it’s offered no strings attached.
Think about which are you in what circumstances – and is your behavior and impact on your coworkers conscious? And if you behave differently with co-workers who are at or below your level in the org chart than you do with coworkers above you why is that and is it justified or helpful to your company?
The top image is of Centaurus A which is two colliding galaxies around a super massive black hole. The bottom image is our Sun.

Terrific article in TechCrunch last week by Ben Horowitz – What’s the Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing your own psychology.
Managing inside my own head is by far the most difficult thing I do as a CEO and I appreciate Ben being so out and candid about what’s going on inside. As he says “Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”
Ben covers classical psychoses like “If I am doing a good job why do I feel so bad?”, and the cliche (and truism)“It’s a Lonely Job” – especially when you are facing a crisis and you have to make the decision to cut staff which impacts the livelihoods of the very people you are working so hard for and care about.
The piece of advice I liked is “Focus on the road not the wall”. It it so easy to stare at all the things that can kill your company – and at any moment in time, even terrific times, any number of things can wipe out a small company. It is this single difference that makes being a CxO in a large company feel so emotionally different than being a CEO of a small company and I have done both. Large companies have mass and momentum – you have time to recover from mistakes most of the time. (A good example is Cadence Design Systems (CDNS) which crashed and fired it’s entire executive team on one day – it’s coming back because of the resiliency of the installed base and the R&D leadership team’s commitment to great products.)
The aspect Ben writes about that I have had in my head many times in the last 15 years which I can testify never goes away is A Final Word of Advice – Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I’ll add though that the most effective management tool I have found for this personal challenge is to get in the pool and pound the laps until my head is clear – which can be anywhere between 1 and 2 miles before I am calm.
If you have an ambition to be CEO one day read the article very carefully several times.

Every recession, every major generation of the Valley, naysayers come out and say the good days are over – but Silicon Valley continues to reinvent itself.
The latest herald of doom is Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun. In a Business Insider interview Scott claims that Silicon Valley’s emerging sectors, like social networking and “green” technology, will not make up for jobs lost due to the software and computer industry consolidation. But with big names like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook planning for expansion, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume it’s all over.
Claiming that every new transition creates less job opportunity than before, Scott lacks confidence in the future potential of contemporary partnerships to flourish. But he’s wrong. Not only is it anticipated that social networking industries will more than make up for lost jobs, but we are likely to see unprecedented growth in the consolidation of software and hardware companies. The technology sector never fails to impress me with new innovation and change, and this “recession” is no exception.
Even Obama sees it (although maybe he is here fund raising at the same time). He says that our tech companies are the heirs to the industries that made the United States the worlds biggest economy. He is in the Bay Area today to discuss job creation and innovation around the Silicon Valley with executives like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many more.
Maybe the irony is stinging. Facebook announced last week that it will in fact move its corporate headquarters to Sun’s old facility in Menlo Park (Sun having been swallowed by the Oracle whale). This is Facebook’s second move in the last two years and they have now leased a 1-million-square-foot campus. Google has announced a big addition as well, introducing a new campus in San Francisco to help alleviate long commutes. Google has also experienced a record 75,000 job applications over the last week, and they expect to grow more than 30,000 employees by 2012 (Dow Jones).
It is software technology that is driving this growth. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, claims that more than 300,000 Android devices are being activated everyday, requiring more engineers and sales people to keep up with the high demand. “This will be our biggest hiring year ever,” said Jordan Newman (a Google company spokesman). Note — FirstRain is currently hiring in California and India.
Growth Industries:

Sadly I think Nokia is trying to get back to growth by partnering with Microsoft for their phone OS but my personal opinion is they just killed what was once a great phone provider. Microsoft may gain – they are trying to make the new Windows Phone 7 a success – and they are hooking up with Nokia’s strong hardware but I doubt the combination will compete. But they are not the only ones focusing on Valley software innovation. Their old competitor, Sony Ericsson, is shifting resources from its headquarters in Sweden to Silicon Valley in order to keep up with the shifting increase from hardware to software demands in the mobile phone industry.

I think Scott is just plain wrong, or certainly colored by his predominantly hardware background. He believes that Silicon Valley is “not the best place in the world to start a company,” but the evidence in the software world is to the contrary. Maybe it’s just his personal preference, but as Senator Mark Warner of Virginia correctly claims, the Internet and social networking have been “one of the rare areas of growth in the U.S. economy” in a decade that didn’t spur much innovation.
As for “green” technology not being able to make up for lost jobs that is certainly true in the short term, as it typically takes a full generation for a new industry to take effect. However, the key to the Silicon Valley economy is now software innovation, and we’re excited to be a part of it.

We started our new fiscal year on Tuesday of this week – our year runs Feb 1 through Jan 31 – and I brought the sales team in from the field for training and forecasting. Q4 of 2010 was very good for us and so we had a little fun alongside of the serious business of training and preparing for the next year.
After a long day in the conference room in our San Mateo office the whole team – R&D, sales et al went bowling together. Some ringers (Reiko that’s you…), some pretty weak bowlers (our resident Frenchman…) all mixed up together and having fun.

One of the teams

As is typical at this type of affair we bought pitchers of beer and pizza for sustenance in the intense competitive environment. And for the few of us who really don’t like beer we went to the bowling alley bar to buy a bottle of wine. Ha! This is how they sell wine – little airline bottles – and when I asked why the bar tender told me – this is a BOWLING ALLEY lady!